back to article People hate hot-desking. Google thinks they’ll love hot-Chromebooking

Google thinks the time has come for widespread adoption of PCs-as-a-service, so has offered up its own experience as an exemplar how to get it done. The company’s explained that it operates a “Grab and Go program” that sees it offer racks full of Chromebooks. If a worker’s machine breaks, they just grab a new one from those …

Page:

  1. Updraft102

    I don't see where it suggested anyone would love it

    Google says it imposes this upon its employees, and that you, as a PHB, can impose it on yours too. Doesn't suggest that they will like it (as with hot desking), just that you can make them do it.

    1. The Man Who Fell To Earth Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: I don't see where it suggested anyone would love it

      It's a Chrome book. By definition that means no real work is done on it, just lightweight web/java app type stuff. No heavy lifting like simulation tools, etc.

      It's a standard MBA-like mindset to think that your workforce can grow flowers when given shit for tools.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I don't see where it suggested anyone would love it

        It's a Chrome book. By definition that means no real work is done on it, just lightweight web/java app type stuff. No heavy lifting like simulation tools, etc.

        In the wide range of businesses I've worked for, the overwhelming use for computers has been "light" office productivity work that a Chromebook would be entirely adequate for. There's a tiny handful of power users who need more grunt, but these people will in any event be seeking a power notebook or a proper workstation.

        From a support perspective, I suspect that a decent Chromebook would be more reliable, easier to support, more secure, and more popular with most users. For the few who want/need heavy i7 laptops, or a desktop that'll cause the streetlights to go dim, then let them have them.

      2. Mark 85

        Re: I don't see where it suggested anyone would love it

        Bull shit is fertilizer, right? So it stands that MBA's have a point. It's just not valid in this context. Send all the MBA's back to hoeing the fields please.

      3. LucreLout

        Re: I don't see where it suggested anyone would love it

        It's a standard MBA-like mindset to think that your workforce can grow flowers when given shit for tools.

        LOL!!!

        I love that expression. Yours or someone elses please? I'd like to give a correct citation when using it.

      4. jelabarre59

        Re: I don't see where it suggested anyone would love it

        It's a standard MBA-like mindset to think that your workforce can grow flowers when given shit for tools.

        You mean like this?

      5. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: I don't see where it suggested anyone would love it

        " By definition that means no real work is done on it, just lightweight web/java app type stuff.

        So, normal for the typical office drone.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I don't see where it suggested anyone would love it

      "The company’s explained that it operates a “Grab and Go program” that sees it offer racks full of Chromebooks."

      We have a similar concept with locked down Surface Pros / Dell XPSs, which at least can run proper local business applications, and will work without an internet connection.

      "does, however, point out that Citrix and VMware are Chromebook-friendly, so can deliver such apps"

      To deliver that we use Dell Wyse terminals with 2-3 screens a desk and a proper keyboard / mouse. Anyone can sit down and login with no need for a crapbook, and with a far better user experience.

  2. Waseem Alkurdi

    Pointless?

    Doesn't every sysadmin have a rack full of dust-covered, corporate-issue ThinkPads that he hands out to whomever comes "wining"* for help?

    * "Wine? Isn't that something users do?" - BOFH

    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Re: Pointless?

      Yes, he does. The issue is the user finding all of his stuff where he expects and using the machine straight away by just opening it and logging in. No Windows sysadmin is capable of delivering that experience because the OS does not provide for it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Pointless?

        "No Windows sysadmin is capable of delivering that experience because the OS does not provide for it."

        Windows has provided for that for well over a decade if not two. From XP onwards it was pretty easy too. If you can't do it personally that's a training and skills issue but don't try to pretend the system can't. Windows can even push apps with policy alongside your data, so the "grab and go" experience actually allows you to leave the building and carry on working on the train. This Google version will fail as soon as you lose network connectivity.

        FWIW Windows also allows users to rebuild/upgrade their device by themselves if you care to set up the infrtastructure, so when their device fails they can try that while using a spare from the shelf.

        The main issue is that Windows devices are worth money so you don't generally leave a rack full lying about in the office. Chromebooks, on the other hand, are essentially worthless so no point stealing them - even the staff don't want to use them let alone selling them on!

        1. SecretSonOfHG

          Re: Pointless?

          @ac: oh, for God's sake, don't try to sell us on that wet fantasy of Windows "grab and go" because most of use aroung here have suffered from some attempt at implementing that fantasy. In the best case "grab and go" is just a reimaging of a OS installation, followed by AD policy updates, with the associated application installs. If all goes well, after a couple of hours your "grab and go" machine will be ready to work. That is, of course, if the only local app is just a Citrix client that you use to connect to a remote desktop.

          Note that having a build ready in a few hours without human intervention is still way ahead of the old days. So this is not an attack on the whole concept, but really a warning: those Windows tools don't provide for the "grab and go" experience that Google describes, where a user picks a machine and is able to get back to work in a matter of minutes, not hours or days.

          1. DAHISTRIMUS

            Re: Pointless?

            im a sysadmin for a large network, we have no issues here, if a computer fails, we bring along another which has our current image on it, pushed out with WDS and deployment workbench, the user logs on with their roaming profile and continues where they left off. apps and programs are pushed out via group policy.

            1. Terry 6 Silver badge

              Re: Pointless?

              The point is that if you can hotdesk (like it or not), with the available PC and roaming profile then you have the fundamentals of Grab and Go. And school laptops use this principle anyway. A kid gets given a laptop from the pile and logs in.

              Adding connection to a remote data store ( i.e. "The Cloud") is no great earth shattering innovation. However providing a working device without access to the internet in some dead spot is a whole nother boiling vessel of aquatic sustenance.

              1. J. Cook Silver badge
                FAIL

                Re: Pointless?

                Yep. You'll lose most (if not all) of the audience when you state "roaming profiles", because the way MS implemented it (and still has implemented it) is a bandwidth sucking dire pig trying to pull a ~200 litre drum of molasses through a very small straw.

                The primary around that tar pit is VDI, in which case you are using the chromebooks as nothing more than RDP clients to a giant bestial cluster of server nodes with fusionI/O cards (or other such on-node storage accelleration) or running vSAN (or are nutanix boxen)

                in which case you are still a prisoner and beholden to the Dreaded Backhoe of Doom in case the network connection gets whacked.

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: Windows roaming profiles

                  Yes, just exactly what sort of bloated crap does Windows store in its roaming profile?

                  On my Linux box, login, my filespace gets mounted from the server, job done.

                  On my Windows box, login, anything from 1 - 5 minutes passes while who knows what junk gets downloaded, and only then can I access my desktop (and my filespace on the server).

                  And ever more cruft decides to add itself to my profile, so that every so often I have to ask for it to be nuked (so it can’t have been important cruft anyway) as it apparently becomes too big to “sync” itself to the profile server. Just what is the point of all this?

                  1. Sandtitz Silver badge
                    Holmes

                    Re: Windows roaming profiles

                    "Yes, just exactly what sort of bloated crap does Windows store in its roaming profile?"

                    Anything ranging from app/user settings to email, files, temp files etc. I'm pretty sure you can calculate your user profile size via explorer and track what exactly is taking the space.

                    "On my Windows box, login, anything from 1 - 5 minutes passes while who knows what junk gets downloaded"

                    Ask your admin why it's taking so long. Perhaps your infrastructure has a bottleneck or the admin is incompetent?

                    Are your roaming profiles set to save everything or are the documents and such redirected to a server location?

                    Could even be some stupid misconfiguration of antivirus checking all the stuff that gets loaded and slowing everything down.

                    1. Anonymous Coward
                      Anonymous Coward

                      Re: Windows roaming profiles

                      Thanks for the explanation, it still sounds idiotic, however. Rather than tediously downloading all of the crap in advance, why doesn't Windows just look for it in a known location in my home folder (which is on the network file server), and only fetch/save any of it as and when a particular file is actually needed?

                      It seems to be the equivalent of checking out every book in the library "just in case", instead of only taking the one that you actually want at any given moment.

                      (And since we don't generally use Outlook or IE, at least there's hopefully not much of that crap being stored in the profile, anyway.)

            2. JimC

              Re: No issues

              Well exactly. I forget when my team got interchangeable PCs working for the majority of users in the organisation, but it was possibly twenty years ago. Maybe more now I think of it because it was always an aim, even pre Windows. Standard PCs without specialist apps were interchangeable in the 90s. Standard desktop, network delivered apps, data on the server. We were a Novell shop so it was a dozen times easier than a pure MS network.

            3. SecretSonOfHG

              Re: Pointless?

              " the user logs on with their roaming profile and continues where they left off. apps and programs are pushed out via group policy."

              That's pretty close to "grab and go", but not quite. For a start, you have your machines pre-imaged, which means someone is taking time (and money) to put your image there. Also, everyone in your environment has exactly the same client software built into the image and already installed (otherwise group policy updates will kick a series of installers) so your licensing is quite simple, and no one uses any kind of specialist software.

              Your environment is likely some kind of call centre, one with very little software diversity, these kind of environment are the exception, rather than the norm.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Pointless?

            "In the best case "grab and go" is just a reimaging of a OS installation, followed by AD policy updates, with the associated application installs"

            Not if you do it right. We just install all apps on the image and hide the ones not wanted for specific users via Group Policy. It's just grab and go for anyone and about 30 seconds for first logon.

            Re-imaging is a once every 6-18 months process for new Windows build releases and takes about 30 minutes a Surface Pro.

          3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            Re: Pointless?

            "Note that having a build ready in a few hours without human intervention is still way ahead of the old days."

            I think the point is that in a large organisation, particularly admin type departments, which are often he majority, they all have the same build. We do hardware support for a number of large orgs, and that's what we see every day. Having pre-imaged hard disks for desktops (or a whole PC) and pre-imaged laptops means a swap out is an almost instantaneous fix from the users point of view leaving the actual fix to happen without a user breathing down your neck.

            1. Hstubbe

              Re: Pointless?

              "I think the point is that in a large organisation, particularly admin type departments, which are often he majority, they all have the same build.".

              I remember working for such a shop once. They treated the sw dev department the same. "Hey, if any can run outlook on it surely you can develop your highly specialized embedded software on it". The machine was good enough for (barely, when the anti-virus, policy enforcing crap and surveillance software wasn't maxing out the cpu) writing my resignation letter.

        2. Hstubbe

          Re: Pointless?

          "so the "grab and go" experience actually allows you to leave the building and carry on working on the train. This Google version will fail as soon as you lose network connectivity."

          Why would you lose network connectivity if you go on a train? This is not the 90's anymore...

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Pointless?

        "No Windows sysadmin is capable of delivering that experience because the OS does not provide for it."

        Welcome to the 21st Century. Windows desktop management capabilities have improved rather a lot since your time. You can get back in your Delorian now.

      3. ecofeco Silver badge

        Re: Pointless?

        Voland, it's called "roaming profile" and "data stored of assigned network drive" and "standardized image with AD controlled access".

        And it's been around for yonks.

        1. nijam Silver badge

          Re: Pointless?

          > And it's been around for yonks.

          And it doesn't work except for the most trivial configurations. Much like Windows itself, obviously.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Pointless?

            "And it doesn't work except for the most trivial configurations."

            Works just fine here across tens of thousands of users.

    2. Vulch

      Re: Pointless?

      "Wine? Isn't that something users do?" - BOFH

      Wine is what they drink, whine is what they do.

      1. Waseem Alkurdi

        Re: Pointless?

        Wine is what they drink, whine is what they do.

        https://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/07/28/bofh_and_the_linux_evangelist/

        You seriously failed to understand Simon Travaglia's pun.

        "But wait a minute, you could run a Windows EMULATOR on your Linux box!! Something like Wine."

        "Wine? What is it?"

        "Something that users do."

        "Pardon?!"

        "Wine? It makes your Linux box pretend to be a Windows box again. Say, how much memory has your machine got?"

  3. Voland's right hand Silver badge

    Nothing new here

    As any Unix sysadmin of old can tell you, in a correctly set up environment with $HOME on NFS, NIS/LDAP and $HOME and /usr/local/??? mapped via autofs any PC is 100% interchangeable. In the days when I ran sysadmin in a development shop we operated full grab-n-go on all Linux workstations. It took less than 3 minutes to swap one as there was nothing to do software-wise. It just worked. In fact, even that was unnecessary - people could just grab the hot-desk while their machine was being services. Windows however... you were looking at a couple of hours time for each swap.

    So back to Chrome. If your data is on the network, if your authentication is from the network and you cannot swap a machine by simply logging in on a new one - you are doing it wrong. Google are demonstrating that they are doing it right. Sure, it is an achievement, but only people with windows background need to sing hallelujah. If you have run a properly setup Unix network it is a "Meh, nothing new".

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Nothing new here

      I think that Google is saying they have a "properly setup Unix network" only with Linux.

      The comment about Windows and XP reminds me of people coming into work, plugging in, going off to get the coffee and coming back fifteen minutes later in the hope of having a domain login prompt. In the case of one company I visited, more like 45 minutes.

      That may not be the case nowadays but I think that experience put an awful lot of people off the idea of shared drives.

      1. Version 1.0 Silver badge

        Re: Nothing new here

        I used to drop an RL02 disk into the drive, hit the load switch and once the READY light was on, log in - no big deal - and that was nearly 40 years ago.

      2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Nothing new here

        "The comment about Windows and XP reminds me of people coming into work, plugging in, going off to get the coffee and coming back fifteen minutes later in the hope of having a domain login prompt. In the case of one company I visited, more like 45 minutes.

        That may not be the case nowadays but I think that experience put an awful lot of people off the idea of shared drives."

        That sounds like the days of old when some admins didn't understand roaming profiles very well and allowed users unlimited profile space and filled up the desktop with folders full of huge files which had to be populated to the local copy of the profile instead of saving their files to the "network drive" or properly maping "My Documents" to the network storage. And huge outlook mailboxes full of PDFs and image file attachments going back years.

    2. Tim99 Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: Nothing new here

      No, if it was “correctly set up” it ran on a single large box. If the lusers terminal screen or keyboard broke, they logged in at another seat...

  4. Blockchain commentard

    Minor problem here. If your network switches are MAC-address locked, pulling a PC (or Chromebook) and plugging in a new one would (in a security conscious setup anyway) would then lock out that port. So now the end user has to tell the network guys which port he's removed the device from and what the new device's MAC address is. An everyday thing for the computer department, not so for Fred in Accounts !

    1. Lusty

      @Blockchain Commentard you make a good point in a legacy network. In cloud world though, ports don't need to be locked down since they only access a public network anyway. Services are secured at the service so all this cloak and dagger security becomes unnecessary. If your main security requires keeping people off of the subnet you're probably already compromised. Proper authentication, encryption etc. is more than enough for normal use-cases, and for abnormal use-cases port locking is laughably innefective so doesn't really contribute. Most devices have their MAC printed on them, and most NICs can spoof a MAC address - can you see the problem here? Even if the MAC isn't printed on, all you'd need to do would be to power up the device and plug it into your own switch - you're on the network with a spoofed MAC in seconds!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      > If your network switches are MAC-address locked

      ... then you value obscurity over security.

      If you *must* do port authentication, then use 802.1x (i.e. user has credentials to access the network)

      But better to go the BeyondCorp route, and not trust the network at all. All app communication is either over HTTPS or VPN.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "If your network switches are MAC-address locked, pulling a PC (or Chromebook) and plugging in a new one would (in a security conscious setup anyway) would then lock out that port"

      Places that are security conscious would generally use NAC as locking by MAC address is a close to useless approach as it takes a matter of seconds to spoof a MAC on most devices.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If a worker’s machine breaks, they just grab a new one

    So when google cloud breaks, we'll just grab another popcorn.

    /devil

  6. pleb

    Mainframe?

    Is this sort of a return to the mainframe and dumb terminals setup of old, except that now the terminals pack their own horsepower?

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Mainframe?

      Yeah, though now of course the 'terminals' can be used almost anywhere. It's not that new a return, either - laptops running a locked-down Linux for accessing an organisations network (the sensitive bits) have been around for years for much the same reasons; no data is stored on a laptop that might be lost or stolen.

    2. jmch Silver badge

      Re: Mainframe?

      Sort of, except that you don't use any of the local storage at all except for user profile files that have to be on C:\. Grab a laptop, log in to domain, it downloads your user profile and voila' . In my experience the biggest problem for software in this scenario isn't the software itself but the licensing, which is still in most cases sold on a per-installed-desktop basis. So this software either has to be network-installed after user logon, or else you need to go full Citrix (but this would then negate the value of having local processing power and memory and reduce it to a true dumb terminal)

    3. Terry 6 Silver badge

      Re: Mainframe?

      Which, funnily enough, in another thread

      https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2018/07/16it_walks_it_talks_it_falls_over_a_bit_windows_10_is_3/

      I wondered if this was Microsoft's cunning plan too. Computing as a service...

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Mainframe?

        "I wondered if this was Microsoft's cunning plan too. Computing as a service."

        Than somebody'll reinvent the PC to be disruptive.

        1. Updraft102

          Re: Mainframe?

          Than somebody'll reinvent the PC to be disruptive.

          Indeed.

          Sales and marketing guys love to have something new and awesome to sell and promote. It doesn't matter what we have now... it's never as good as what the sales guys want us to buy today. If it was, why would anyone spend all kinds of money on it? Sell, sell, sell! It doesn't matter that the new thing we're supposed to buy now is the same thing that we abandoned when whatever it is we have now came along. That was ages ago, and most people have forgotten. What's old is new again, and what used to be new has gotten old. Just give it a shiny new name, like "cloud" or "thin client", and go out there and sell it!

      2. nijam Silver badge

        Re: Mainframe?

        > ...Microsoft's cunning plan too. Computing as a service...

        Computing as an obstruction, more like.

    4. steelpillow Silver badge

      Re: Mainframe?

      This kind of horses-of-my-own client was/is known as a "smart terminal".

      Make it mobile and swap "mainframe" for "cloud" and yes, that's about it.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Mainframe?

      Yeup, every 20 years, regular as clockwork...

      In the '70's we had V100's, in the '90's we had X Terminals, and now we have Chromebooks and dumb Win32 clients.

      As for supposed added horse power I had a Mac in 1984 with a VT100 window sitting beside my actual VT100 where the backend VAX 11/750's were main storage. No Mac hardrive in 1984. That came in 1985.

      Oh, yeah. And all PC's/terminals in the building were fully networked. Mixed bag of VT100's and graphic terminals, a whole bunch of Victor / Apricot / DEC PC's , a few Macs' and even a Lisa or two.

      So what is it that's new again?

      1. stephanh

        Re: Mainframe?

        "So what is it that's new again?"

        Well the *claim* is that, unlike a VT100, the chromebook is still somewhat useful when the network goes down, because stuff is cached locally.

        How well this works out in practice, I have no idea, having managed to avoid Chromebooks so far.

Page:

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like